Thursday, 31 May 2012

Sepia Saturday 129: Shall we stop for a cuppa, dear

Since there appears to be a dearth of tiffin-related items in my own family photo collection, I will delve into my mother-in-law's archive of images for a contribution to this week's Sepia Saturday mix.

Stopping by the side of the road for a cup of tea must, I suppose, have been a relatively common occurrence, even in the late 1930s when this snapshot was taken, but it must have been a pretty quiet country lane to contemplate laying out the picnic paraphernalia in the roadway itself. My mother-in-law - I'm guessing around six years old at that time, and therefore dating the photograph to the late 1930s or early 1940s - is sitting on the running board of the car while her mother prepares the tea. My wife tells me that this was achieved with the aid of a parafin stove - hence the need for a flat, stable surface, I suppose. She doesn't look particularly enamoured at the prospect, but perhaps there were some rather fearsome cows or an over-friendly cart horse in a field off camera to the left. The car appears to be a Rolls-Royce Phantom II Continental, the chassis for which was built in Derby, but I'll leave further identification of the make/model/year to those more knowledgeable.

The inter-war period saw a dramatic rise in the use of cars for leisure outings and there was, of course, a corresponding market for accessories, such as the all important touring maps ...

... and travel guides. These maps and guides are from my own collection, purchased over a number of years from a number of sources - mainly on eBay - and therefore relate to the Midlands, from where my father hails, rather than the south of England.

Unfortunately my copy of The AA Road Book of England & Wales (Member's Copy) (kindly given to me by Nigel Aspdin) doesn't show a date of publication, but I suspect it was published in 1936 or 1937, since in the Introduction it refers to "new arterial roads and by-passes ... being developed under the Five Year Plan announced by the Government towards the end of 1935." It sounds very much like the Revised and Enlarged Edition of June 1936 which I found described thus in a second-hand book listing:

First edition hard back binding in publisher's original burgundy cloth covers with rounded corners, gilt title and author lettering to the spine and to the upper panel. 8vo. 8½" x 5½". Contains over 600 printed pages of text with colour maps, cord bookmark with opaque plastic tag with AA logo.

I was most intrigued by this explanation of the origins of the Automobile Association:

After the passing of the Motor Car Act in 1903, it was almost impossible to go anywhere in a motor car without receiving summonses for exceeding - sometimes by a mere fraction - the legal speed limit of twenty miles an hour. To meet the situation some motorists organized and maintained at their own expense a few cyclists on the London-Brighton road whose task it was to warn all passing motorists of "police traps." In August, 1905, the work was put on a permanent basis and the Automobile Association came into existence with exactly ninety subscribers.

The AA Road Book was first published in 1925 but by the time this edition came out, they were doing a lot more than warning their members of pesky speed traps. The first section includes a comprehensive series of 785 itineraries, with a map index, for all the major and minor routes around the country, including that for Leamington to Derby, shown above.

Much of the book (pages 211-648) is taken up with a Gazetteer, with potted descriptions of towns and some villages, including suggestions for "day drives" emmanating from the larger towns.

Simplified maps of the larger centres show the arterial routes and some of the major roads for ease of navigation.

Finally, there is a full colour atlas or map section, based on the Bartholomew series, with a series of 23 pages covering England, Wales and Scotland as far as Edinburgh. Presumably any decent Englishman wouldn't think of driving any further north than that without a passport and a Baedeker.
Enough from me for this week, as I'm about to head off on some travels of my own, although not in such grand style. I'll be away for some weeks, but I will have my notebook computer with me and supposedly decent internet access, in spite of the exotic, remote location, and therefore hope to keep blogging at fairly frequent intervals. Whether I find something appropriate for Sepia Saturday is another matter, but for now you can head over to catch everyone else's contributions.

Although my roadside tea drinking does not go back to the 1930s, I can remember as a kid in the 1950s in the car (a converted van actually) with my parents stopping for frequent pick-nicks in lay-bys. You never see such things these days - too many fast food restaurants.

This reminded me of summer trips to the country my mother,sister and I would take. My mother always carried coffee in a thermos and this was the only time we were allowed to have any. There were picnic tables to stop at. It looks like she is setting things out right on the dirt.

Roadside teamaking looks a wee bit hazardous. We used to take a Thermos flask on our long journeys. My husband was fascinated by the Derby road maps as he lived in Derby when he was serving his apprenticeship with Rolls Royce. He remarked how empty the spaces between the roads and the ring road looked back then.

That photo amazes me too. Maybe that was their road to their house but I doubt that since it is paved. Can you imagine driving up on someone having tea by the side of the road. Some exquisite articles you have there. I love the story about the beginning of AA and going 20 mph. Great post.QMM

I found this fascinating, Brett as I worked in Derby with British Rail for several years at the beginning of the 1990s and was an AA member at the time. Tea by the roadside would be a hazardous thing to do these days; mind you it would be better that these so-call Service Stations.

I find the idea of pulling to the side of the road and fixing tea much, much more appealing than stopping at a McDonald's for a McFatty Meal. I think I'll try brewing a jar of sun tea in the car on my next long drive north to Boston...

Good to see you surface here, iw - even your meh muse seems to have been rather sporadic recently.

There are still plenty of laybys, complete with picnic tables and benches, on rural roads here in New Zealand, often in the most pictureseque spots, and we often make stops in the summer. A thermos always comes in handy, but a parafin stove - I think not.